


The Perfect Path

by anonymous_moose



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: (sorry), Guilt, M/M, once again as serious as i ever imagine taako getting, or the absence thereof, there is like no smooching in this story so don't even worry about that rating, while still being himself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:18:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8887114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous_moose/pseuds/anonymous_moose
Summary: Taako has no regrets, but he wonders what it would be like if he did. Kravitz explains the absolute basics of what life is. Personal growth is narrowly avoided.





	

Taako leaned back and sighed. Kravitz wrapped his arms around his waist and pecked him on the neck, and not for the first time, Taako strongly reconsidered the nature of their relationship.

Kravitz had wanted to take it slow. He hadn't said anything, of course, but he gave off that vibe, and Taako didn't want to scare him off. Besides, he was cool with it; like he'd told Kravitz, it had been a while. He wanted to savor this thing.

As a result, they hadn't done anything one might consider salacious. Or... lascivious. Whichever. Hell, they'd barely moved past aggressive cuddling, and even now, laying on Taako's bed in the wake of their most vigorous makeout sesh to date, no clothes had come off. Maybe it would have been frustrating in other circumstances, but these days, Taako was more than willing to take what he could get.

But then he'd kiss the side of Taako's neck (a nothing kiss, just chaste little peck) and he'd start thinking that maybe it wouldn't be so bad to just pop the cork on this sucker and go to town.

"What's so funny?"

Taako turned his head slightly. "Huh?"

Kravitz looked down at him, amused. "You were... giggling."

"Oh." Taako readjusted himself to be more horizontal (Kravitz was up against the headboard with most of the pillows) and scooted up to set the back of his head beneath Kravitz's chin. "Nothing. Just came up with a real good metaphor."

"For what?"

"I'll tell you if it ever comes up."

Taako gestured vaguely in one direction. A magazine across the room lifted into the air and floated to the bed.

"You're giggling again."

"Shh," he shushed, taking the magazine in one hand and petting one of Kravitz's wrists with the other. "We're reading now."

Kravitz hummed. Taako felt it through the back of his head to the tips of his pointy ears. It sent a brief shiver down his spine, and before he could begin to reconsider the nature of their relationship for the second time in two minutes, he flipped open the magazine to a random page and started reading.

It was one of those glamorous lifestyle magazines, the kind with the fashions and recipes and travelogues from all across the world. Back in the day, Taako would pick one up every chance he got and cut out pages to stick all over his wagon's walls; of recipes he wanted to try, fashions he was convinced he could pull off, and places he'd visit when he was famous everywhere else. A lot of that was gone for him, now, but old habits died hard. And there was still something relaxing about it.

Taako skimmed through a 'traditional' recipe from some podunk little hamlet south of Calimshan—what kind of dullard uses nutmeg to season sea bass?—and flipped to the next one. Kravitz shifted beneath him and lifted one of his hands to adjust the pillow-throne he'd constructed behind him.

"You comfy back there?" Taako asked idly.

"Yes, dear," Kravitz replied, settling back down. "Where did you get all these pillows, by the way?"

"Magnus' room. The man needs a suit of pillow armor to sleep, it's pretty weird."

"And he didn't mind?"

"Heck if I know, my dude." Taako licked one of his fingers and turned the page. "He's in his pocket workshop carving up some new project. Probably another duck."

"I was going to ask," Kravitz said, turning his head towards the wooden duck Taako was currently using to prop up one leg of his dresser. "About the ducks."

"What am I, his biographer?" Taako shrugged. "Ask him. He'll probably give you some emotional backstory to—"

As if on cue, Taako turned the page and shut right up.

_Come to beautiful town-on-the-rise, Glamour Springs! The vacation capital of the Dales! Stay at our many inns, including the famous Outlook Hotel, featured on the front page of the Baldur's Gate Tribune! Eat at our many fine restaurants and pubs—featuring fare from seafood to comfort food, there's something for everyone! Experience the landmark hot springs that give our town its name! Enjoy the many traveling performers that pass through, from skillful acrobats to famed magicians—_

"Taako?"

His ears pricked up. "Sorry, what was that?"

"You went very still. Is something wrong?"

Taako blinked once, twice. He considered lying, saying no, skipping the page and moving on, getting a new magazine, or spinning around and sticking his tongue down Kravitz's throat, but none of that felt particularly honest. And he was having one of those moments. The ones that seemed to come up more and more these days.

He sat up, Kravitz's arms pulling away from him. He closed the magazine and flicked it across the room to land on the pile with the others, near the laundry he still had to do and the new clothes he still had to put away.

Taako opened his mouth and paused. He wasn't willing to have this conversation yet, not this soon. Talk about scaring a guy away. No, he'd talk around it. That was his specialty.

"Do you have any regrets?"

Kravitz didn't react. He kicked up a knee and raised one hand to (very tentatively, as though he might startle) touch Taako's back.

"After enough time," he said plainly, "it stops making sense to."

Taako ran a hand through his hair and chuckled softly. "Right. The whole angel of death thing."

He turned and found Kravitz looking at him strangely. "Do... you have regrets, Taako?"

Taako smiled and put a hand to his chest. "Me? Of course not, my man. Got taught that lesson a long time ago. No regrets. Not ever. That's Taako, baby."

He would have laughed to put a bullet on it, but he didn't bother forcing it. That damn honesty. He wasn't sure why it cropped up around Kravitz.

"But, y'know..." Taako paused, looked away, fiddled with a button on his shirt. "Sometimes I think, maybe if I wasn't me... like, maybe if I was someone who had regrets, or was scared of 'em, maybe... certain things would have turned out better."

No guilt over Glamour Springs. Wasn't his fault, not even a little. Wasn't a court in Faerun that would convict him, and if everyone knew the truth, they'd all be on his side too. But even Taako couldn't keep himself from thinking that maybe, if he was a different sort of person, forty people might still be alive. If he had been just a little bit nicer to Sazed, a little bit less of an egotist, a little bit less of a glory hog, a little bit less... Taako.

Kravitz didn't move, didn't speak for a few long moments. Then he sat up properly, closed the distance between them a little. His hand moved upward, towards Taako's shoulder, and gave it a gentle squeeze. It was clammy as ever. Taako didn't want to look at him. He settled for looking down at the dark fingers on his shoulder.

"Everyone has a moment where they are convinced someone else, perhaps even anyone else, would have done better," Kravitz said. "That much, at least, is universal."

Taako didn't nod at the platitude, but he canted his head slightly in acknowledgment.

"But..." Kravitz sighed. "I'm afraid I'm not much of an expert on things like this. I only see the ends of lives, their various final rewards. But having lived my fair share of centuries, I have made some observations. One of them is that there is no such thing as a life lived without failure. There is no perfect path to walk for any of us. That is your Lady's entire theology, isn't it?"

Taako rolled his eyes at Kravitz's insistence on using proper titles for gods which they spoke to on a regular basis. But he nodded, because he was right.

"Life," Kravitz continued, "is messy. Complicated. There is no single reason for any of it. It's a culmination of a million other things that ends in one specific moment. Yes, maybe if you weren't you, some things might turn out better, but other things would assuredly turn out far worse. And—"

Taako waited a handful of seconds. Kravitz did not continue. He turned to face him, and saw Kravitz himself looking away. He seemed to come to a decision, and when he found Taako staring at him, he hesitated only a moment longer.

"Look around you, Taako."

Taako cocked an eyebrow, but did as he was told. His bedroom was a sty, had been since the day he'd moved in. Books, magazines, and clothes were everywhere, his dresser was covered in various different kinds of jewelry, as well as numerous shades of lip balm, eyeliner, and eyeshadow. He had magical ephemera on every available surface, including the walls and the floor, from bottles of reagents, to dowsing rods and scrying wheels, to pages torn from academic journals on transmutation or pop-articles on how to improve your prestidigitation.

"Look at where you are," Kravitz continued. "Think about how you got here. I know we haven't known each other very long, so forgive me if this sounds absurd, but... I believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that no one but you could have arrived here, now, at this precise moment."

His hand moved from Taako's shoulder to the back of his neck, sending a slight chill down Taako's spine. He turned back and found Kravitz's strange red eyes.

"That is, if—if you think here is a good place to... be." He broke eye contact and looked away, shaking his head. "Sorry, I mean—I didn't intend for that to sound—"

Taako lifted a finger and pressed it against Kravitz's mouth. The look on his face (halfway between 'guilty puppy' and 'worried schoolboy') was among the funniest things Taako had seen all week. He smiled, big and wide, and with his other hand, shoved Kravitz back into his pillow-throne. Taako laid across his chest, resting his chin on his hands.

"You always know just what to say, Krav."

Kravitz opened his mouth, obviously about to bring up how this was the first time he'd known what to say in any of their conversations, but Taako cut him off with another finger on his upper lip. He shushed him, smiled lazily, and then turned his head to the side.

Taako's ears did more than just frame his face; there was no heartbeat in that big handsome chest, not even a faint one. What there was, though, was the gentle hum of raw magical power; a sound like the ghost of a sound, and a tingling so slight most people don't feel it, or if they do, presume they imagined it. It was downright soothing.

"When's the last time you slept?" Taako asked with a yawn.

"I don't exactly need to sleep."

"Answer the question, bonehead."

Kravitz's chest bounced gently as he scoffed out a laugh.

"About... two hundred years, give or take."

"Then you are about due for a nap, my dude."

"It's one o'clock in the afternoon."

"Oh, sure, wouldn't want you to get jetlagged for your instantaneous trip back to the ethereal plane or whatever—"

"Alright, alright," Kravitz chuckled, chest bouncing again. "You've made your point."

Taako extended an arm out to the side, and with one final flick of his wrist, the blanket crumpled at the foot of the bed lifted straight into the air, and then fell forwards onto them. Even laying on top of a human ice cube, Taako felt thoroughly cozy. As he drifted off, he had a couple big, lucid thoughts of the sort that he regularly had before he fell asleep and which he would always forget the moment he woke up.

One was that he didn't deserve everything that he'd gotten.

The other was that he really hoped Kravitz didn't snore.


End file.
